Samuel_Tow

A little more info might help. You've named your pic "why here" and all the notation it has on it is latitude and longitude. Why would the Vanguard care? Are you playing a word game with the word "vanguard?" Is this a riddle? Are only people who know what you're talking about supposed to get it?

I realise that you may well be getting tired of me making these "question threads" and for this I apologise. This is just how my brain works. In my spare time, I wonder about things. Abstract things, basic concepts that sometimes don't really have much to do with the subject which inspired me to wonder about them. But at the end of the day, I still feel that the conclusions derived from these questions still have an actual impact in real practice.

I want to avoid the latest "that's what players" expect argument just because we already did this, like, yesterday, but this concerns the question of player expectations nevertheless. Quick question: Try to think back and count how many times you've heard the phrase "it's like this in comic books" or something to that effect on these forums. Go on, I'll wait... ... ... I'm guessing "a lot," but I can't really speak for everyone. The thing is, that's not actually something wrong to say. People like comic books, they come to a game that's ostensibly inspired by and modelled after comic books, so naturally they expect and want what's in the game to be like what's in comic books, to the extent the genre can support it. And that's perfectly fine.

Then, however, there are people like me, and to sidestep the argument of comic books let me give a different example - the common fictional representation of sexes (side-step into a pit, but roll with it). Watch any trailer for any game which gives you classes and lets you pick your character's gender and you'll almost always see big strong men serving as the warriors, tanks or heavy infantry while women serve as mages, archers, marksmen (marks...women?) techs, scientist and anything else that's seen as less brutish and physical. I really don't want to challenge popular preconception here at all, that's not my point. But to me, this is the "base," this is what's expected. So when I sit down to make characters of my own, I start to think what I could do that HASN'T been done before. Yes, cute bruisers, matriarch and so forth have been done in the past, but they are significantly less common in fiction, and as such they draw my attention.

This presents me with something of a dichotomy, even if it's never as binary as I may end up presenting it as. On the one hand, we have this draw for everything that's familiar to us. I'd call it "nostalgia," but it goes beyond simple affinity for the past. In the very simplest of terms, people like what they like, and they will naturally tend towards the things that they have already known before and that they have already found to like. A comic book fan who chooses to branch out into video game will naturally prefer a comic-book-like game. That's really perfectly natural.

However, on the other hand, you have people who actually reject the things they are familiar with. Call it short attention span, call it easy boredom, call it an adventurous spirit, it doesn't matter. The simple fact, however, is that some people just don't want to keep repeating the same experiences over and over again and instead always look for new ones. Always that new sound, always that new idea, always that cool new game that does things completely differently. In this day and age saturated with dirt brown and gunmetal grey hollow shooters, it would be natural for a long-term shooter fan to throw his hands in the air and look for something completely different that isn't a shooter at all just to rekindle his love of games in general, is it not?

This is the duality of wanting something that's familiar and wanting something that's different. To prove that my own dichotomy isn't as binary, allow me to use myself as an example. Speak with anyone who's ever trolled my posts and they'll tell you that I'm pretty much the most conservative, static person in the game. I don't like change, I don't like new systems that weren't needed, I don't want the game to be anything other than what it already is. So on the one hand, I hold onto what's familiar with a dead man's grip. When it comes to concepts, however, things are completely the opposite. In terms of character ideas and designs, I'm always looking not just for something new, but intentionally and specifically for something I don't like.

For instance, I never really liked the classic tights super heroes. Just not my thing. Nevertheless, on a whim one day, I went ahead and made one anyway. It was a challenge - how could I take this thing I don't like and make something I like out of it? The "how" is complex and not very interesting, but the result was a success. Not only had I made a tights super hero, but I had expanded my own horizons and the boundaries of my own preferences. Having forced myself to experience a new idea that I wasn't comfortable with, I gained new skills and new likes. This trend has repeated over the years, expanding my horizons into many different concepts that I could never have dreamed of.

Back in 2004, I only really had two or three real characters because I simply didn't have ideas for any more than that. Everything else seemed dumb and uninteresting. Come 2011 and I have 50. To most of you, that may not seem like much when some have hundreds upon hundreds. However, each of my characters represents a wildly different idea, and each and every single one represents one more step in expanding the field of characters I can work with. Even to this day I still look for more character concepts that I haven't done before and possibly that I don't like to continue this process.

At first, it may seem like asking whether you prefer things that you're familiar with or things that are different isn't much of a question. However, think about this for yourselves, look at the history of your hobbies and your desires and you may find more patterns there than you suspect. Those are what I want to know about. Obviously, all of us prefer a little bit of both. I just want to know where that boundary lies for you.

Any "disaster" I can completely and totally miss by skipping on a few hours of gameplay probably isn't a big enough deal to merit fifteen threads about it.

I want the giant school girl's pink backpack. Sooner, rather than later If this connects to the back properly and doesn't hang way off like the Steampunk Boiler, this will be very, very sweet. I'm not sure whom I could give this backpack to, to be honest, but I'm sure I'll think of something when the time comes.

Also, Barbarian: I was right! Both the shield and the sword are new. Coolness! I wonder if women will get either and how much they'll be scaled down, but new shields is good. We've been due for more for a long time. Also, that ring strap is new. Definitely new. Sadly, like with most Barbarian items, I want this for women, but even just for men, it's a very good detail Definitely beats the old ring strap by a mile.

We really need a new abbreviation, because to my sensibilities, any Praetorian EATs should be called "Nomnoms."

We've been having a lot of these extended maintenance windows lately, and Zwillinger warned us to expect a few more. Something to do with hardware upgrades in preparation for Freedom. We should also probably not expect any real patch notes other than "Stability changes" or "Performance changes," as that's what they've been doing for a while noww.

I kind of want to hope this is Freedom since, you know, I want it, but the Zombie has a point - with a head start planned and a promotion this big, a surprise launch just isn't an option. If they haven't made an announced, that ain't it.

Oh, well. I've been meaning to start a human revolution. Might as well do it now that I can't play City of Heroes.